Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Vegan MoFo Day 3: Muhammara

Continuing right on with the dips... today I continue my sub-theme of vaguely middle eastern dips with one I had never made before: muhammara.

To tell the truth, I've only ever even had muhammara once or twice before. I wonder why it is that some dips catch on like wildfire and are everywhere-- we've all had hummus before-- and then other ones like this just don't show up as often. I read about six thousand different recipes and synthesized them into the one at the end of this post.

We all really liked it. The Emperor ate a ton of it, which was funny because he tends to be pretty choosy about dips (he mostly likes hummus and nothing else). With a jar of pre-roasted peppers, it only took about 15 minutes to bang out, and I now have a huge bottle of pomegranate molasses so yeah, I'll most likely be making it again.

We had cut vegetables (carrots, celery, French Breakfast radishes and cucumber) and whole wheat baguette as dippers, with olives on the side. Here's a pic of the full spread:

While I was making this, I had the worst kitchen disaster. See, I was making tomorrow's dip too which involved roasting garlic (mmm, roasted garlic). I'm out of tinfoil so I roasted in a baking dish I have which has a pyrex lid.

Had a pyrex lid.

Clever me, I had no place to set down the super hot lid when the dish came out of the oven... so I put it in the sink. And then I put the cold water on to cool it off... and as the realization that this was a bad, bad idea percolated through my head and my hand started to reach out for the tap, the lid exploded. Oops.

Well, no one was hurt, and dinner turned out fine, so no big deal. Besides, the first dish of MoFo has been broken... so now it's a party!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, here's the recipe for the dip:

Muhammara

makes ~2c

1 1/2 c walnuts

about 3 inches of baguette or 1/2c breadcrumbs (use GF crumbs and this is GF)

1 7-oz jar of roasted red peppers

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

2 tsps pomegranate molasses

2 cloves garlic, sliced

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

hot paprika for garnish

1. Toast the walnuts over medium heat for 10 minutes or until darkened and delicious smelling.

2. While the walnuts are toasting, pulse the baguette into coarse breadcrumbs in a food processor.

3. Add the walnuts to the food processor and pulse again until you've got a processor full of crumbs.

4. Add all the other ingredients except paprika, and puree. It will still have some texture, and that is fine.

5. Sprinkle with hot paprika and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Easy and delicious! And really insanely rich. In hindsight, I'd have left the olive oil out-- this is rich enough just from the walnuts without any oil added.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And now the boys. Here's a shot over my shoulder of the Magician on our walk to the farmer's market:

And here's the Emperor on the same:

He kept shouting VEGAN MOFO! at random people today. It was kind of wonderful.

Oh no about the Pyrex lid! But yay for the dip. I had a bottle of pomegranate molasses in my hands recently and I said nah, what would I do with it? And now I've seen a million recipes since that call for it...